“My father spent years in Irkutsk after his father’s release from Stalin’s gulags, Mily. I know it well, and I know just the place to bring them. Besides, the farther we keep them from Moscow, the farther we keep them from Sokalov. This is the smart thing to do. Go, get everything prepared. I will change clothes and meet you at the car.”
41
Trans-Siberian Railway
Novosibirsk, Russia
Jenkins and Kulikova spent two days and nights largely out of sight as the train chugged east, passing through miles of forests and muddy villages, past the towns of Yaroslavl, Kirov, Perm, and Yekaterinburg, and finally through the Ural mountain range into Siberia, though the mountains had been no more than foothills. The cities seemed to come and go, indistinguishable from one another, gray and gloomy. In between the cities spread a vast nothingness, grazing for cattle, marshland. Jenkins and Kulikova did not leave their compartment except to use the bathroom at the end of the carriage. They purchased food and a deck of cards from the trolley service, ate in their cabin, and played card games to occupy their time.
“If I eat another cup of noodles I might throw up,” Jenkins said at one point.
With each of the prior stops, Jenkins spent all but a few minutes of the allotted time peering out their carriage window at the people on the platform. He looked for anyone lingering beneath the canopy, or standing near the Victorian-style iron lampposts seemingly without purpose. With each stop, dozens of passengers waited to board the train, and dozens more poured off to buy food or goods in the railway terminal stores or from the men and women who set up tables beneath the terminal canopies. Nicotine-starved passengers hurried from the train to smoke, which was not allowed on board and subject to a heavy fine.
Someone associated with the Velikayas or Sokalov could have already boarded the train, but Jenkins did not think so. Nor did Kulikova. They agreed the best opportunity the Velikayas or Sokalov had to grab Jenkins and Kulikova without drawing significant attention was when the duo departed the train, whenever and wherever that might be.
Jenkins still did not know, and he did not like being in the dark. He needed to find a way to contact Lemore.
Five minutes before the train was scheduled to depart a depot, Jenkins pulled on a sweatshirt and his baseball cap and lifted the hood over his head to cover as much of his face as possible. He stepped off the train holding a cigarette from a pack he had purchased at a terminal stop, lit it, and checked his cell phone. He had no Internet access as the train traveled between cities. He did have access at the depot stops, but his phone remained glitchy since his plunge into the Neglinnaya River. He either could not get a signal or the signal would fade in and out. Mostly out. Watching others on the terminal, their gazes glued to their phones, he deduced the problem wasn’t the signal but his phone.
Each time he returned to his cabin, Kulikova shrugged and said much the same thing. “What can we do? It is what it is, Charlie. At least neither of us is in a cell at Lefortovo.” He wasn’t sure if she was being pragmatic or fatalistic. Maybe both.
On the second day, after his attempt at the Novosibirsk depot failed, he asked the provodnik if any stores at the upcoming terminals sold cell phones. The provodnik did not know for certain but said Jenkins’s best bet was at the Krasnoyarsk station. The government had spent billions to upgrade the depot station and the city in advance of the 2019 Winter Universiade, a sports competition between youth from more than sixty nations. If not Krasnoyarsk, the provodnik suggested the terminal in Irkutsk, a city that had, at one time, been called “the Paris of Siberia.”
“If the terminals do not have a store, check the stores in the nearby plazas, but be aware that those two stops are for only one half hour, and you would have to go through security to get back into the station. If there is a line, you might not make it. The train will leave as scheduled.”
Kulikova echoed the provodnik’s warning. “Russian trains were once notorious for delays, but that has changed in recent years. They are now religiously punctual. The train will leave on time, with or without you, and we cannot risk it leaving without you.”
Jenkins decided he had no choice but to at least try the Krasnoyarsk station. If he had time, and the terminal was not busy, he would chance the stores in the plaza outside the station. Kulikova wanted to divide the task and search the station stores while Jenkins tried the ones in the plaza, but he dismissed that idea out of hand. He did not want to put her at any risk.
When the train stopped at nearly half past eight that night, Jenkins quickly exited, this time wearing the wig and mustache that aged him, and moving as an old man up the steps into the terminal with the other passengers. He shifted his gaze left to right, looking for anyone shadowing him. He searched the stores on one side of the station and then the other. He entered several and asked if they carried prepaid cell phones. None did, but the employees kept suggesting other stores in the railway terminal. By the time he had checked each store recommended, it was 8:52. He looked out the windows of the station to the stores in the plaza, saw a pharmacy, and, beside it, the retail store Svyaznoy, one of the larger cell phone retailers in Russia.